Can you buy a song and have it on there with a click or two? Can you buy about any TV show and have it on there with a click? Can you rent movies with a click and watch them? Can you buy movies and watch them in an instant? Can you watch 1/2 the movie on your Apple TV, click, and watch the other half on your Ipod on the airliner? All of this with just a click or less? These are the features that some people desire and in order to license these kind of deals you have to build in limitations.
Obviously if you don't desire this sort of feature set it would be silly to buy one.
Yes. No. Yes. Yes. Yes. Possibly (how do you get it with less than 1 click?).
If you know where to look, getting MP3s/Movies/TV Shows is fairly easy. Transferring to a MSD is cake (easier than firing up iTunes and praying it doesn't crash in Windows).
Literally:
1) Fireup your music downloader (be it Napster, Limewire, iTunes (if you really want to), Rhapsody, mIRC
))etc.
2) Search for the song you want
3) Pay for/download the song you want
4) Drag file to mp3 player.
vs.
1) Lauch iTunes
2) relaunch iTunes, because it crashed
3) Search for music
4) Download music
5) Restart iTunes, as it just crashed
6) etc. etc.
Yeah, its that bad on Windows for some people. But the problem is not in the software, its in Windows.
Either way, even if it is the same number of steps, its still easier, because you can (imagine the horror from the RIAA), move the files between the MP3 player and you computer multiple times. As it should be done. You own that file. Its a file, on your computer, like a text document or a picture. Its yours.
And you know this, Jesse. You know that I'm right. Its not any harder to use a non iPod than it is to use any other MP3 player. You pay less for the other MP3 player and get more features.